


Bruno & Boots ficlets (multiple, one per chapter)

by calathea



Category: Macdonald Hall - Korman
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-28
Updated: 2009-12-28
Packaged: 2017-10-05 10:00:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 8,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/40462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calathea/pseuds/calathea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A set of shorter Bruno and Boots ficlets.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Bruno, run!

Boots ran across Elmer in the hallway at around eight o'clock. In fact, he almost ran Elmer down in the hallway, and had to reach out and steady the tray that the other boy was carrying before it fell.

"Phew!" said Elmer, balancing the tray on one hand and re-positioning the cereal bowl on it in the precise centre once more. "Almost dropped my new invention."

Boots looked into the bowl. It was filled with a lumpy white substance, like school paste that hadn't been stirred properly. He looked up, and caught Elmer beaming with pride at his bowl of glop. "Uh. OK."

Wilbur emerged from his own room at that moment. "Hey guys," he said, "Are you going to breakfast?" No one had a chance to speak before he continued, "Ooh! Porridge!" looking at Elmer's bowl. From somewhere, he produced a spoon, and made ready to dig in. Elmer squeaked and danced out of reach. "Stop! Stop!"

Intent on food, Wilbur started to give chase. Elmer backed off again. "It's not food Wilbur! It's a new form of explosive. Any contact with metal and the detonation reaction will begin!"

Boots made a grab for Wilbur's spoon, dropping it onto Elmer's tray. Wilbur pouted. "Explosive? Why is it in a cereal bowl?"

Elmer was fussily re-arranging the bowl on the tray again. "I invented it last night. The thick ceramic of school crockery was the most inert substance to hand."

Wilbur looked blank. "It won't go bang in there," Boots translated. "Look, Elmer, do you think it's a good idea to take it in to breakfast with you?"

"Probably not, no." Elmer considered. "May I leave it in your room? I don't have time to go back to my own."

In answer, Boots pushed open the door to his room, and watched while Elmer dropped the tray onto the desk he shared with Bruno. They both ignored the blanket-covered shape still snoring in Bruno's bed.

Over breakfast, Elmer recited the chemical properties of his latest invention, and tried to demonstrate the molecular pattern using all the breakfast condiments. Boots sort of listened, but mostly just wished, not for the first time, that Bruno were more of a morning person. Meal times were much more interesting when Bruno was around. Bruno was not at his best though before nine o'clock. Even now, with only ten minutes before the first bell for morning classes, Bruno would just be staggering out of bed for the day. Boots grinned to himself, picturing Bruno, hair wild, stumbling around their room, trying to put himself together for the day... seeing the cereal bowl and the spoon on a tray on their desk... Boots jumped to his feet, his chair falling on the floor behind him, and scrambled out of the room. He was already shouting by the time he got to the door of Dormitory 3. "Bruno! _Bruno_! Don't! Stop what you're doing!"

He skidded to a halt inside their room, just in time to see Bruno shove Wilbur's spoon deep into the bowl of lumpy white solids. "Bruno, run! That's not oatmeal!" he yelled, dragging Bruno toward the door. The white stuff began to sizzle and hiss unpleasantly. Suddenly, there was a loud BANG! and Boots fell to the floor, pulling Bruno down with him.

After a moment, Boots sat up cautiously, putting a hand out to help Bruno into a seated position. The walls were caked with white paste, and their desk was in ruins. The white bowl, miraculously unaffected, teetered on the very edge of the splintered surface. Bruno blinked at him owlishly. "You know, Boots, I always knew breakfast was dangerous!"


	2. Do You Think?

Boots, arriving home first, checked the answering machine and listened to their messages while he unpacked some groceries. Recorded sales message from a credit card company. Message from the washing machine repair guy to say he could come next Wednesday at lunchtime. Boots rolled his eyes and made a note on the notepad on the fridge to call him back. The last message started, and the first words caught his attention.

"_Hello?_" The voice was female, and hesitant. "_This is Lisa Sturgeon. I'm calling on behalf of my mother for Bruno Walton and Melvin O'Neil. My father, who was principal at MacDonald Hall, passed away two days ago. He had a heart attack. It was very sudden_." The voice on the tape hitched a little. "_My mother thought you would like to know the details of the funeral, which will be on Friday. Please call us back..._" The voice carried on, giving a phone number. The tape clicked and whirred.

Boots stood in the kitchen, still holding a bag of vegetables, unable to move. The front door opened and closed, and Bruno sauntered in cheerfully, dropping his bag on a kitchen chair.

"What are you doing, Boots?" Bruno asked, brushing a kiss against his cheek before moving to the fridge. "You look like one of those statues. 'Man with Cabbage'."

Moving creakily, Boots set down the bag on the counter, and moved over to the answering machine. Bruno watched him curiously, leaning on the counter with a bottle of GatorAde while Boots fiddled with the machine.

Boots turned back to him as the third message played again. Bruno went still as the words struck him. They stood in silence for a moment when the tape hissed to an end. Boots watched Bruno try to force out some words. "Friday? I'll have to phone work." Bruno's voice was hoarse. "And, God, we have to call the guys. I'm not even sure I have Elmer's new number since he moved out to California. Do you think NASA will give me his home phone number?"

Boots said nothing. Bruno began to pace back and forth, muttering about the arrangements he had to make. After a few moments, Boots reached out to Bruno, pulling him close. For a moment, Bruno struggled in his arms, but then he subsided, pressing his forehead into Boots's shoulder. Boots pulled him a bit closer.

"Do you think the Fish ever..." Bruno started to say, his voice muffled. "Never mind."

Boots nudged at Bruno, encouraging him to lift his head. "Do I think the Fish ever what?" he asked, gently.

"Do you think he knew how much we loved the school?"

Boots laughed. "Bruno. We go visit every founder's day. There's a 'Dormitory 3' scholarship at the school. We send him Christmas cards. I think he knew."

Bruno dropped his head back down to Boots's shoulder. "Yeah. I guess he knew." He sighed, blowing warm air across Boots's neck. "We should start calling the others, I guess."

Boots tightened his arms around Bruno. "In a minute." Bruno nodded, and they stood for a long moment in the middle of the kitchen, close in one another's embrace, while a little piece of their childhood vanished forever.


	3. The problem with being Bruno's friend

The problem with being friends with Bruno, Boots thought one night in bed, was that girls who he had thought might quite like him tended to react in one of two ways to Bruno, and neither reaction was good.

Take Patty Smith, for instance, who was a friend of Diane's, though not the sort of friend that meant Boots couldn't date her and break her heart, Diane had explained in a fit of bewildering girl logic. He had taken Patty to the coffee shop in town, and bought her a ludicrously expensive coffee the name of which he had been unable to pronounce. This social faux pas apart, the date had seemed to be going well, until Bruno arrived, ordered a mocha-frappa-something-or-other, and then came over to join them while his drink was being made. He was, as always, tousled and rumpled, which _Boots_ knew to be a consequence of Bruno not brushing his hair or knowing how to use an iron, but which _Patty_, once Bruno had departed, sucking at his iced coffee thing through a straw, seemed to find unbearably romantic. Boots spent a miserable fifteen minutes fending off questions about his roommate before making up some urgent history homework and abandoning the date, Patty and his seven dollar coffee without a second glance. He repaid Bruno by slamming the door of their room open, waking Bruno from his habitual Saturday afternoon, post-caffiene-injection nap, and then stomping around noisily gathering his swimming gear. Bruno seemed unmoved, but at the movie they went to that night, he handed Boots a bag of M&amp;Ms with a comment about Boots' depleted allowance. Boots forgave him silently, and never mentioned Patty again.

At the other end of the spectrum was Min Yoo. Boots met her at a running meet, where he admired her shiny dark hair, and her speed over the 5 mile circuit. She was a year younger than Cathy and Diane, and therefore, they told him, fair game. With this disturbing comment, they told him to ask her to the debate competition between the two schools. They met at the door to the debating chamber, and amidst the snickers and nudges of his classmates, he seated her near the front. At first, everything seemed to go well. Min smiled at him twice while the debate was being proposed, and flipped her glossy hair flirtatiously a couple of times. When Bruno stood up to oppose, Boots whistled and cheered along with rest of Dormitory Three. Bruno looked over at where Boots was sitting and winked before he started speaking. Bruno was _fantastic_ at debate. He pounded the table. He exhorted his listeners to see reason. He tangled up the words of the other debaters, and made it sound like they were either stupid, or lying, or both. Boots hooted and clapped when Bruno sat down again. While the debaters took a few moments for the second chairs to prepare, Boots turned to grin at Min, ready to boast about how that was his roommate, but her face was pinched and scornful. She sniffed in an aggravated manner when he asked what was wrong, and would only say, her voice dripping with scorn "That BOY." The date ended with a distinctly frosty goodnight at the door, and Boots trudged back to the dorms. How could he date someone who didn't like Bruno? He pondered this question for a while, until a cheerful uproar in the corridor informed him of the return of the debate champion. Minutes later, he was swept into the thick of the party, Bruno's arm slung around his shoulders. He forgot about Min until the party wound down, and he found himself in bed, his room-mate breathing quietly in his own bed on the other side of the room.

Yes, the problem with girls, Boots thought, mostly asleep, was that they either liked Bruno far too much, or he didn't like them at all. No, that was backwards. They didn't like _Bruno_ at all. Besides, dates were boring. Why would anyone go out with some girl if they could go out with Bruno?


	4. Towels

Bruno rolled onto his back on the bed and tried very hard to keep his eyes on the ceiling. He should probably stop doing this. _Probably._

Boots crouched down beside his bed. "Why are my pool shoes under your bed?" he asked, irritably.

"Why do you insist on calling them pool shoes when they're flip-flops?" replied Bruno, grimly gazing upward at the light fixture. Boots sighed loudly, the puff of his breath tickling over a patch of Bruno's stomach where his t-shirt had hiked up.

Despite himself Bruno's eyes rolled round from the ceiling to his infuriating, oblivious, room-mate. Boots glared back at him, then stood up. "Stop stealing my swimming stuff. It wasn't funny in 6th grade, so it certainly isn't funny now."

To Bruno's disappointment, Boots wrapped the towel he'd just excavated from under Bruno's bed around his Speedo-clad ass, and wandered off towards the pool.

Left behind, Bruno rolled over with a groan, and tried not to think of all the other hiding places in their room that Boots' swimming gear could find its way into.


	5. Five Times Bruno Walton Did Something Sensible

**1\. Melvin**

They hadn't told Bruno he would have to share a room. Certainly they'd never said it would be with someone called _Melvin_. Well, to be honest, they might have done, they might have told him anything, because he'd pretty much stopped listening at around the point when his mother said _and your guidance counsellor thinks you need more structure, so we're sending you to boarding school in Ontario_ because he was too busy yelling. So here he was, and his name was on the door in neat black letters like a tombstone, and below it _Melvin O'Neal_. His roommate.

"But _Melvin_," he said again, and his mother sighed and looked disappointed and put upon, and like she was remembering all the reasons he was here getting some _structure _and not at home with his friends, his real friends, who didn't have names like _Melvin_, and getting ready for another year at public school.

"Be sensible, Bruno," she said, wearily, "He's probably a very nice boy, give him a chance."

He mumbled something, which she must have taken as consent to be reasonable, and watched her open his trunk and start pulling out all the little pieces of home he hadn't been able to bear to leave behind.

She helped him unpack his clothes and books too, and he looked with loathing at the half of the closet and shelves already occupied, at the stupid shirts and pants and shoes and books that all belonged to _Melvin_. Then she left, and Bruno waved her good-bye, and went back to his room to find his detestable roommate was already there, sitting on his bed looking dejected, floppy blond hair falling into his blue eyes, and about as un-Melvin-like as Bruno could imagine.

"I'm Boots," said the boy, after a moment, "If you call me Melvin, I'll smother you in your sleep."

Bruno sat down on his own bed, and looked steadily back at _Mel_… at Boots. "I'm Bruno," he said, "I guess we're stuck here together."

**2\. Boots**

Mr Sturgeon steepled his fingers and looked over them at Bruno. Bruno squirmed. It wasn't that he didn't have experience – lots of experience – of being looked at censoriously by school principals, both this one and a whole series of others before him, but there was something about The Fish, something extra to his glare, that made Bruno uncomfortable in his skin.

"I realize that asking you to get through a semester here without inflicting serious damage on yourself, the school or my reputation is doomed to failure," said The Fish, sighing, "These latest stunts, however…"

He trailed off, and flipped open the thick folder in front of him, marked on the side with Bruno's name. He turned over a few pages. After a moment, he closed it again, and sighed once more.

"You can go back to class now," he said, and Bruno got to his feet gratefully and headed towards the door.

"Bruno," The Fish said, and Bruno turned to find the principal looking at him, sort of smiling, "It might be sensible to exercise a little caution. Where you lead, Mr. O'Neal will always follow, and while you may not mind what happens to you…"

He paused again. "Well," he said, "I believe you are supposed to be in English Literature now, so go straight there, please."

Bruno, his hand still on the doorknob, looked at The Fish, and nodded, slowly, and went to class.

Three days later, Boots dragged him into the infirmary, declaring anxiously that there was something _wrong_ with Bruno, that he was depressed, or, no,_ poisoned_, maybe, and please, would someone fix him, but that's another story.

**3\. Future**

When people asked him about his university application forms, Bruno lied a lot. He had good grades, despite what everyone thought, and he had money, from his grandfather, enough to go wherever he wanted to go, and he had a plan. So he lied a lot, and made it look like he applied wherever the course was easy, or cheap, or the nightlife was good, and all the time he _schemed_.

He couldn't apply to all the same places as Boots, because that would look scary, and sort of like he was a stalker, which he didn't care about, but Boots might. So he applied for places near Boots, and when Boots decided to accept the place at the University of Toronto, Bruno was sensible. He couldn't turn down his own place at York just because it was called _York_. He couldn't, because his own application to UT had been rejected. So he was sensible, and he accepted York, and put up with the turkey jokes for fully six days until the rest of Dormitory Three was distracted by the revelation that Elmer had developed an approximate equivalent of Viagra, that worked about half the time, and the other half the time made you vomit non-stop for three hours. Bruno turned down the pharmaceutical Russian roulette, and while everyone else was alternately desperately jerking off in the shower or worshipping the porcelain gods, he went about part two of his plan: convincing Boots that it would be just as much fun to live off-campus in a shared apartment as it would be to live in dorms.

**4\. Accident**

"Boots. Melvin, Boots O'Neal," Bruno gasped, trembling hands pressed flat to the receptionist's desk. "I got a call. He's here. I got a call to come here."

The woman at the desk glanced at him incuriously, as if breathless and pale young men stammered nonsense at her desk daily, which perhaps they did, because this place, with the clinical pale green walls, was Toronto General Hospital, and he was here, and they had called to tell him Boots had been admitted.

"Mr O'Neal is on the third floor, room 313," said the receptionist, and he felt the earth yaw and pitch beneath him, because that confirmed it, that made it _real_, and his half imagined resolution of this whole experience, of it being a practical joke, or the wrong number or something, anything but real, was ripped away. The receptionist looked at him as he swayed in place, a little sympathy dawning on her face, and wrote the room number down for him on a card, and pointed out the elevators in the corner.

As he leaned against the metal of the elevator wall, he was glad, fiercely, desperately glad that Boots had made him to the sensible thing, that day in town, with the lawyers and the wills and the expression of wish and all the ordinary, macabre details of life and death. He'd teased Boots, threatened to extort terrible deathbed promises, to set unreasonable conditions on Boots' inheritance of the $64 in his savings account and collection of Tonka toys that would, honest, be worth something, one day, when collectors weren't quite so fussy about them having been played with, but he'd done it. And that meant he was here – here first because he was Boots' next of kin, and they called him first, and he didn't need to wait for Boots' mom or dad to remember to call him, the unwanted sort-of-son-in-law, to stand next to Boots' bed and argue for what Boots had told him he wanted, like some made-for-TV movie hero.

The thought of that, of the earnest expression on Boots' face when they talked about it, the warm calloused hands gripping his, made him shake and sway again. He concentrated very hard for a moment on the numbers on the slip of paper in his hand, and stumbled erratically into a room, painted the same horrible pale green, seeing only Boots, lying pale and broken, left leg raised on some kind of pulley.

Bruno collapsed into a chair beside the bed and bent his head over Boots' hand, lying bandaged by his side and whispered, "Oh God, Boots," he said, "Oh, God. Never ever make me have to decide whether to pull the plug."

Boots laughed groggily, and hissed when his cracked ribs protested, and the other man in the two bed room laughed too, and that was how Bruno met Murray, who would subsequently cheat Bruno out of $33 at poker and teach Boots all the words to a astonishingly dirty sea shanty while Boots recovered from the car accident.

**5\. Escape**

"Let's run away," Boots murmured, desperately, "If we went to the airport now, I bet we could get a last minute flight to, I don't know, Barbados. We could lie on a beach!"

Bruno grinned, and slung his arm around the back of Boots' chair. "We could," he agreed, his smile widening at the look of hope in Boots' eyes, "Of course, your mother and your agent would kill you, but at least you'd be a tanned corpse. Now listen to the nice man's speech."

Boots looked tragic at this pronouncement, but turned dutifully to listen to the speaker, some kind of pillar of Canadian literature, as he muttered almost inaudibly about the standards of modern children's fiction. After a few moments, Boots leaned in close to Bruno and hissed urgently, "We could go to the bathroom. I could go out the window, uh..." Boots looked shiftily around the assembled luminaries of the world of writing around him, "I could make it worth your while," he finished.

Bruno snorted a laugh, and then smiled weakly at the little old lady glaring at the two of them across the expanse of the dinner table. "Don't you think we're a little old for blowjobs in public bathrooms?" he asked, his lips close to Boots' ear.

Boots glared at him. "Where's your sense of adventure?" he whispered back. "Honestly, Bruno, I don't know why you're suddenly pretending to be _sensible_..."

Whatever insult Boots was going to throw at him next was thankfully lost in the polite applause for the mumbling speaker, and suddenly, the spotlight was on Boots, and he was invited up to the podium to give his speech of acceptance of his prize. Bruno watched as Boots stuttered his way through his thanks and acknowledgments, smiling when his own name came up, as it always did. Maybe they could have been on a beach in Barbados, or just in the men's room crammed into a single stall, Bruno reflected, but Boots' grateful stammering joy at receiving yet another accolade for his work was almost better than either.

When the crowd rose to applaud, he stood too, and watched as Boots, flushed and happy, strode back to their table with his trophy in one hand. As Boots approached the table, Bruno cast a wicked look over at the shadowed door to the lobby before walking casually away, hearing Boots's footfall behind him even as another speaker rose to address the audience.

Bruno grinned as he strolled purposefully towards the men's room. _Sensible?_ Oh, no!


	6. Five Times Bruno Cheered Boots On To Victory

**1\. The First Time **

Bruno had been Boots' roommate for five weeks, and his declared best friend for twenty-seven days the first time Boots swam in a race for MacDonald Hall. He could only vaguely hear the yelling through the white noise of the water splashing as he swam, but when he popped up at the end of the last lap, breathless but victorious, he could see Bruno jumping up and down and cheering while the rest of Dormitory Three pretended they didn't know him. Boots grinned, waved, and wondered if Bruno yelling himself hoarse was a cunning plot to get out of giving his oral book report in English class the next day.

**2\. The Time Bruno Was Almost Beaten Up**

The problem with Bruno, Boots thought, as he ran down the soccer field, was that he really had no sense of self-preservation. It was one thing to shout insults at the opposing team when they came from a school a safe distance from MacDonald Hall. It was another thing entirely when Boots was playing in the end of term game between the MacDonald Hall senior and junior teams, and the supporters of the other team were not only three years older than they were but also knew exactly where the two of them lived.

Boots, watching the ball with one eye and three very large guys from the twelfth grade converging on Bruno on the sidelines with the other, decided drastic action was called for. When the ball was passed in his direction he ran in a desperate sprint towards goal, sending the ball winging into the top left-hand corner of the net. When he glanced over to the sidelines, Bruno was dancing around and screaming, the three huge guys had backed off, and the score flipped over to a 1-1 tie. Boots waved at Dormitory Three (standing a discreet distance from Bruno) and jogged back to the centre of the pitch.

**3\. The Time When Boots Got Carried Off The Field**

The victory cheer Bruno was leading stopped abruptly when Boots didn't get up off the ground after the first few seconds. Boots managed to roll onto his side when the coach ran over, but climbing onto the stretcher was agony.

Hours later, he woke up from a short nap in the school infirmary to find Bruno drawing something (probably obscene) on the fresh plaster on his arm. "I don't think you should play rugby any more," said Bruno, not looking up from his artwork.

Boots looked at the dark head bent over his arm. "Okay," he said, and let his eyes close again.

**4\. The Time When Bruno Got Carried Off The Field**

"But _how_ did you fall off the bleachers?" Boots asked, shoving a small group of awe-stricken ninth graders out of the way so that Bruno could manoeuvre through the hallway on his crutches.

"I was just cheering you on," Bruno said, defensively. "And then there was an incident with Sidney, a banana peel and six of the York supporters, and I sort of got pushed off the side."

Boots opened the door to their room and helped Bruno onto his bed. Bruno groaned as he settled onto his back. "The things I do for you," he said, "And school spirit, of course."

Boots grinned, and tucked a blanket under Bruno's injured leg. "Of course."

**5\. Every Time**

Bruno, in spite of a command of language born of a career inciting revolution, was not the most vocal of lovers. He would seduce Boots into bed (or up against the wall, or under the kitchen table, and Boots would never look at the ironing board in the same way again) with a thousand words, but once they were there, he seemed to lose all but three: "yes", "Boots", and "love", repeated over and over in different tones and at different volumes.

Boots didn't mind.


	7. Five Things The Counsellors At Algonkian Island Will Never Forget

**1\. Shock and Awe**

Within 24 hours of the start of camp, every counsellor on Camp Algonkian Island knew three things:

(A) MacDonald Hall Forever!

(B) This was the fourth summer Bruno and Boots had spent together at summer camp. There was a reason why they never went to the same camp twice.

(c) It was probably the same reason Bruno and Boots had been sent to boarding school by their parents.

**2\. Team Spirit**

If there was an Olympic medal for building _esprit de corps_ in the most insane, destructive and terrifying way ever, Bruno Walton would be in the running for it. He didn't stop at cheering on his own team. Oh no. Bruno found _other_ ways to help, ways that included, for example, the total depletion of the camp's red paint stores, the accidental sinking of a whole flotilla of small dinghies, and the mysterious appearance in the middle of camp of a large inflatable pig.

The only thing _more_ frightening than Bruno Walton "helping" his team to victory was Bruno Walton organizing a revolution, with you cast in the role of the oppressor to be overthrown.

**3\. Girls! Girls! Girls!**

The best way to keep Bruno Walton in line was to threaten to make Boots dance with every single girl at the dinner table when they went to Silver Lake, although no-one could decide whether that was because of Bruno's fear of being left to face the hordes of pink-clad girls alone, or because Bruno took pity on Boots, who paled visibly when the threat was made.

**4\. Best Friends Forever**

No-one, but _no-one_ (except Bruno, of course) was allowed to call Boots "Melvin" anywhere that Bruno might hear about it. Not if they wanted to survive the summer, anyway.

No-one, but _no-one_ (except Boots, of course) was allowed to bad-mouth Bruno Walton anywhere that Boots O'Neal might hear about it, not if Camp Algonkian Island wanted Boots on any of the sports teams that summer.

**5\. Discretion**

There are some things that might happen between Best Friends Forever, in the romantic, mosquito-filled twilight after lights out on Camp Algonkian Island, that are better left unseen.


	8. Five Futures for Bruno & Boots I Am (probably) Not Writing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The most inaccurate title ever, since I eventually wrote two of them. /o\

** 1\. President Bruno &amp; First Spouse Boots**

Bruno has been in office for about three hours when three large men in black suits turn up in the First Spouse's suite that Boots is gazing around in horror. The most recent recumbent of these offices was a woman, and she has apparently left an indelible floral stain on the rooms set aside for Boots and his three aides. Dubiously, he invites them to sit down on a set of tapestry-covered chairs (floral) and offers them coffee in delicate (floral) china cups.

One of the men introduces himself as the team leader of his personal bodyguard unit, and Boots eyes him with an apparently mutual sense of horror and resignation, and then they take him through the main security procedures of the White House and explain to him what happens in the event of a nuclear strike on the United States. Boots finds himself nodding at what he hopes are appropriate intervals and wondering to himself whether Bruno could be convinced to abandon the Presidency in favour of ruling, say, a small Pacific island instead, where the most significant threat to their lives would be a cunningly sharpened bamboo shoot.

The lead bodyguard stops talking about nuclear war and asks who has Boots' schedule, and Boots doesn't know exactly what to say. At some point between Bruno's speech announcing that he was the Democratic party candidate for President and them moving in to the White House, Boots' job teaching English to recalcitrant middle school kids got lost and he hasn't worked out what he is supposed to be doing instead. Boots has been in the middle of Bruno's political career since he first walked into Room 306 when he was thirteen years old, and he's been threatened with expulsion, exposure and execution in the years since then, but he'd never expected to end up stripped of his own dreams and left on the side-lines of Bruno's as well.

After a while the men in suits seem to decide Boots can't take any more for the day, and go away, leaving him to look at the overwhelmingly floral décor of his offices and wonder what good he can do as the spouse of one of the world's most powerful men.

* * *

**2\. The Rockstar and the Professor **

The class is laughing when Boots turns back from the blackboard to look at them, and he grins at them.

"What, you don't like economics as explained by the intersection of boys trapped in a small Canadian boarding school and zucchini?" he says playfully, and the class laughs again. Boots grins back and then bites back the edges of his smile when three of his more persistent admirers in the front row of the auditorium sigh and nudge one another. Econ 301 doesn't get too many students who aren't economics majors, so mostly he manages to avoid too much interaction with what the head of the department calls O'Neal's Little Fan Club (and Boots just _knows_ that he's capitalizing those words), but he's looking forward to the end of the term now, especially after last night's phone call from the tenure committee.

He smiles at the class again, but most of them are scribbling down copies of what he has written on the board, and only the embarrassingly besotted front row make eye contact, which he hastily breaks. He's just about to start talking again when the door at the back clicks open, and the students nearest the door look up, surprised at the interruption. Boots frowns, because for all he's rated on all the websites as being one of the university's most popular lecturers he doesn't have a lot of tolerance for people coming in late to his classes, and by this point in the semester the students usually know better. "You're late," Boots says, repressively, barely glancing at the jean-clad figure still hovering in the doorway, looking back down at his notes. "Come in and sit down quickly."

Boots turns back to the board to start drawing another graph, explaining it as he draws, but though he can hear the scratch of pens over paper there's also a perceptible rustle and shift of breath from the side of the room where the late-comer must have gone to sit down. Boots finishes drawing his graph, and turns around impatiently to recapture the attention of his class, only to find even the least-easily distracted front row are gazing, open-mouthed, at the man now seated in their midst. Irritated, he glances over again, and then stops, his heart suddenly pounding.

Bruno Walton, Boots hears himself think indulgently before he can stop himself. Of course it was Bruno, who else could cause so much commotion by just sitting down? The chalk in his hand breaks with a little puff of dust, though, as if his fingers are quicker to remember the rest of the story than his head, and recalled to all his memories, he ducks down to pick up a fallen piece, the blood thundering in his ears as he bends and reaches. Or perhaps that's just Bruno's name, whispered over and over by the students in a tidal wave of noise.

There's another shift of movement at the door of the classroom, and Boots raises his eyes to meet the gaze of Bruno's bodyguard, Phil, who slips into the room to stand at the door.

"Class," Boots says, and the incredulous gazes of the students swing toward him. He can see some of them already punching messages into their pagers and cellphones, and he spares a thought for whether he and Bruno will be able to get out of the Economics department alive. "Class. Let's continue."

For the next forty minutes he holds their attention, more or less, though no-one answers a question without looking first at Bruno, silent and faintly smug, like they're asking permission to speak. Econ 301 has never been his favourite class by any stretch of the imagination, but Boots has never been quite so relieved when it finally winds to a close. "No questions today," he says, hastily gathering up his papers, "Office hours as usual tomorrow, finish the reading as described on the syllabus prior to the next class."

The students seem reluctant to leave, and Boots can hardly blame them. He and Bruno look at one another across the expanse of the lecture theatre while the students straggle out, until the door clicks behind the last of them and Phil coughs quietly and steps outside himself.

"So," says Bruno, and papers drop from Boots' nerveless gasp at the husky, familiar voice, "I got your message."

"Uh," says Boots, shoving at the papers with a toe. "I knew you were… that is, I had your schedule. So, I knew."

"I was on stage," says Bruno, agreeably, "I was on stage and then I was on the bus and then I was chartering a plane to get here."

Boots just stares at him, noticing the dark rings under Bruno's eyes, the way Bruno's t-shirt drapes on a too-thin body worn down by the demands of touring.

"Tenure," says Bruno, after a long pause. "Finally."

Boots nods, and bends down to pick up his papers, shuffles them nervously into a heap.

"This is what we've been waiting for, then," Bruno says, and Boots looks up to grin at him.

"This is what we were waiting for," he agrees, and grins wider and wider as Bruno whoops loudly.

They are just in touching distance when Phil looks around the door and says, urgently, "Guys, we're starting to have a crowd control _problem_ here."

* * *

**3\. The Hot 50**

She was chewing on her pencil and wondering what on earth made her think wearing nylons on a day as hot as today was a good idea when Bruno Walton appeared in the lobby of the office building to meet her. Startled, she dropped first the pencil, then her notebook when he smiled at her and offered her a security pass for the building.

"So you can get in and out to the washroom," he said, grinning and thumbing the button for the elevator. "So, Hot 50, you gonna tell me what number we're at?"

It was impossible not to smile back at him, even while her inward, sceptical voice, which sounded just like her editor, funnily enough, pointed out that sending the CEO down to collect the journalist from reception was probably just a cheap stunt she was supposed to write into her article. Come work with us, she thought, cynically, feeling her smile harden and sneer, we're so _approachable_.

"That's classified," she said, and he sighed in a ludicrously exaggerated way, and then politely extended his arm to indicate she should get out of the elevator first. She followed him through a security locked door and into a large open-plan office.

Her initial impression was that it was, well, _bland_. Just an office really, with grey carpet and cream walls, and a distinct lack of dubious art or that strange loft-apartment look that so many of these little "Hot" company leaders they made her go out and profile seemed to love. This could have been anything, the head office of an umbrella company, even, she thought, not the headquarters of one of the most innovative product design companies in the world at the moment. It was messy, too, and some of the plants in corners looked pretty dead, as if no-one had cared enough to tidy up before the press arrived.

Even more surprising was that no-one seemed remotely interested in Walton, who was walking unconcernedly through the cubicles and desks. A lot of the executives she met seemed to expect to be treated like demi-gods, fawned on by their assistants, or else they nervously faked camaraderie with employees like they were still in a start-up and knew everyone's name. This was something different – Walton was just comfortable, ignored, for the most part.

He led her to the back of the room, where there were two offices with wooden doors, and a large round table between the two, currently covered in blue prints.

"This is Elmer," Bruno said, pointing to a man in a neat shirt and bow-tie, thick glasses pushed high on his nose, the very picture of a stereotypical geek, who was standing, apparently lose in thought, by the table. "He's our lead technical guy. Elmer, did you want something?"

Elmer looked vaguely at her, and waved a blueprint. "Are you busy, Bruno?" he said to Walton, "I can come back."

"Yeah, I'll be, I don't know, an hour," said Walton, and Elmer nodded, and watched them walk into the office that said DANGER - BRUNO on the door.

There was a man already in the room, sitting on the desk talking into a cellphone. "No," he was saying, his free hand tangled in his hair, "No, no way we can do it by the tenth. Absolutely not. No. No. No. Well, you go tell him that. Yes. All right, I'll wait to hear from you."

He flipped his phone shut. "You must be the journalist," he said, and juggled his phone around so he could shake hands.

"Mr. O'Neal," she said, recognising him from their publicity shots.

"Call me Boots," said O'Neal, and glanced down at his phone as it beeped peremptorily.

"He's the COO," said Walton, while O'Neal was distracted, "Co-owner, of course, and my side-kick, and, I don't know, what else, Boots?"

"Husband?" suggested O'Neal, rolling his eyes and pocketing the phone. "Or is this not one of _those_ interviews?"

* * *

**4\. The Writer and the Coffee Shop**

Roger, the manager of Just One Cup! is a pushover. Boots knew this already, in fact, because Bruno has been working there in evenings and weekends for over six months, and it takes a certain, indulgent kind of manager to put up with Bruno for that long. Boots was absolutely certain of it now though, because not only has Bruno convinced Roger to hire Diane as well, but Boots himself has been allowed to monopolise the best sofa in the coffee shop for most of the day, and he has yet to pay for any of the coffee Bruno keeps bringing over.

"You're not paying for these?" he whispered when Bruno brought another over and sat down on the sofa next to him for his break.

Bruno shrugged. "Failed attempts at menu items by Diane," he said. "Someone might as well drink them."

Alarmed, Boots looked down at his cup. "Um," he said, but since Diane had apparently overheard Bruno and was frowning at him from across the room, he sipped hastily at the hot drink, and smiled weakly at Diane. She grinned back, and turned back to the milk she was frothing.

"How's it going?" said Bruno, tapping Boots' laptop. "The Great Canadian Novel of the Twenty-First Century?"

Boots sighed. "It's not going to be that, Bruno," he said. "Actually, I don't think it's going to be anything. Nothing I write makes any sense."

"Well, I'd feel sorry for you," said Bruno, unsympathetically, "But you're always convinced everything you write is crap, and then people actually read it and want to, like, give you scholarships to university on the strength of it."

Boots sighed again, and looked morosely at the blinking cursor on his screen. "Yeah, but…"

Bruno nudged him hard in the ribs. "Shut up. You just need to write something different for a while. Write about something you know for a while."

"What do I know?" said Boots, gloomily, "Being at a boys boarding school in Ontario, that's all I know."

"So write about that," said Bruno, grinning. "I can see it now. You'll make MacDonald Hall famous, and I'll get to sign autographs."

Boots started to grin back, but in the back of his mind he almost _heard_ the click of a lightbulb going on. He stared at Bruno.

"Aha!" said Bruno, jumping to his feet. "I know that look. Get writing, boy. I'm going to go stop Diane before she blow the coffee shop to Vancouver with the cappuccino machine."

"You don't think someone might recognise what I'm writing about?" said Boots, nervously imaging libel cases.

Bruno looked at him quizzically. "You think anyone would believe any of your antics were_ real_?"

Boots spluttered. "MY antics?" he said, outraged. Bruno just laughed and reached out to ruffle his hair as he walked away.

Boots watched him walk away, then picked up his laptop. He stared for a moment at the empty screen, and then started to type: _East of Toronto, just off Highway 48…_*

* * * * * * * * 

"How's it going?" Bruno said, sitting down next to him later and passing Boots another cup of coffee. The last cup was still sitting on the table, untouched. "Was I any help?"

Boots blinked at him, and started to smile slowly. "Oh yeah, oh wow, Bruno, this is really working." He set the laptop down carefully on the coffee table

Bruno beamed back at him. "Am I in it?"

"Of course!" said Boots, then paused. "Um, that's all right isn't it?"

Bruno just grinned. "And do I have a best friend and sidekick?" he said.

"Yeah, and you keep getting him in trouble," said Boots, smirking, "But sometimes his antics get you in trouble too. The two of you take turns getting each other in trouble and saving one another from terrible peril."

Bruno laughed, and put his arm around Boots' shoulder. "So it's a love story then?"

"How it could be anything else?" said Boots, and leaned harder into Bruno's warm bulk.

* * *

**5\. The Bookshop Owner**

Boots' routine was pretty simple: survive, somehow, the morning onslaught of chaos that occurred when you shared a house with an eleven year old, preferably with the aid of copious amounts of caffeine; walk to work, his own bookshop just fifteen minutes from home; open the doors at nine, greeting Maggie, who ran the coffeeshop inside the store and covered his own counter if he needed to run out for a minute during the day; serve customers all day. In a town this size, "serving customers" meant, really, listening to the gossip, accepting discreet orders that the customer's wife/husband/mother/pastor wouldn't quite _understand_ if they were made public, and steering the more impressionable towards books he thought they might enjoy, all to the gentle soundtrack of Maggie's coffee machines, the sound of turning pages, and the CDs he switched over regularly.

At four, a predictable twenty minutes late, Sarah would run in, ready excuses tripping off her tongue, and Boots would either laugh or roll his eyes, depending on how outrageous her reason for tardiness was that day. She would grin back, and settle down at the table in Junior Fiction to do her homework where Boots could see her from the counter. At five, Maggie's daughter Moira would arrive to take over the bookshop for the evening, and he and Sarah would go home to eat, read or watch television and eventually go to bed, Sarah sleeping easily and Boots waiting what felt like forever, sometimes, for slumber to find him, watching the waves washing onto the beach for hours as he lay in bed.

It was a Tuesday when it all changed.

Sarah had, somehow, misplaced a shoe, and Boots, desperately decaffeinated, tried to imagine he was the left sneaker of an eleven year old girl and finally located it in the furthest, most distant recess of the pantry. It made him late, and, rushing towards the shop, his travel mug of coffee slipped in his hand and he spilled the hot liquid down his pale coloured jeans. The heavens opened when he was still a half mile away from the store, and he arrived to find Maggie, dripping and unimpressed, tucked under the meagre overhang of the shop door and in a bad mood.

That set the tone for the day: publishers sent the wrong books, orders went astray, the crowd in the coffee shop ebbed and flowed but smelled consistently like rain and wet woollen coats. Sarah was late _and_ wet despite her raincoat and umbrella, and told a story so improbable about the causes of both that Boots, reflecting briefly on her genetic origins, had no choice but to believe her and expect a note from her homeroom teacher the next day. Moira was held up by an accident on the main road -- the only road -- on the island, rushing in at nearly a quarter after five, full of apologies that Boots, longing to go home, brushed aside as politely as he could. He went into the back room to collect his coat.

"Boots," Sarah called from just outside the door, "There's a man here to see you."

Boots stuffed a few papers into his bag -- he did all his paperwork in the evenings while Sarah watched TV -- and stepped back out into the shop. Sarah waved vaguely at a man in a long black coat standing with his back to Boots, gazing apparently transfixed at the torrents of rain falling beyond the window. Maggie, when Boots caught her eye, just shrugged.

His first thought was that the hair, heavily salted with grey, didn't go with the straightness of the painfully slim form, his second that the back of the man's head was vaguely familiar.

"Hello?" he said, and then cleared his throat when the stranger didn't move. He could hear the thread of annoyance in his own voice. "You wanted to see me?"

His feet started moving before the man was even halfway turned to greet him, his hands already reaching out. "Bruno," he said, "Bruno. Bruno."

Bruno felt stiff and breakable in his arms, at first. He smelled like the ocean and wet dog, very slightly, but mostly he smelled like Bruno, and Boots pressed his forehead into Bruno's shoulder and breathed in. Boots could hear murmurs behind him, Sarah's voice confused and maybe frightened, a crash he dimly recognised as someone dropping a mug onto a tiled floor, but mostly he could hear Bruno's voice, his own name over and over. He pulled Bruno in tighter and said nothing more, just prayed that he wouldn't wake, gritty-eyed, to the roll of waves on the beach.


End file.
